TLP: Maybe John King Always Wanted to be a Stay-at-Home Daddy

As long as Erin Burnett has been at CNBC, she's been compared with Maria Bartiromo. Can two women work together on teevee and it not be a catfight? Down to the stupid nicknames ... "Money Honey" is apparently a Bartiromo trademark, and Vanity Fair claims that "Street Sweetie" is Burnett's nickname. I listen to the droning of CNBC and never heard that one, but then again, I'm lazy. (I will admit to paying special attention to the "Closing Bell" for reasons that have nothing to do with Wall Street.)

The signing will represent a shift to general news anchoring for Ms. Burnett, who has shown interest in branching out beyond business news, CNBC’s specialty. It is unclear what time slot she will occupy at CNN.

Ms. Burnett, who was considered a rising star within CNBC and its parent, NBCUniversal Media, held talks with two broadcast networks, ABC and CBS, before deciding to join CNN, according to two of the people. They insisted on anonymity because the deal had not been made public.

A spokeswoman for CNN, a unit of Time Warner, declined comment on Wednesday night.

Ms. Burnett has been an anchor at CNBC since 2005. Before then, she worked at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bloomberg Television. Currently she is a co-anchor of “Squawk on the Street” on weekdays from 9 to 11 a.m. Eastern Time, and the sole anchor of “Street Signs” from 2 to 3 p.m.

That means that CNBC, the country’s dominant business news channel, will have a lot of air time to fill without her.

While it might be cute to suggest that Burnett would leave because she was never going to be the Queen B, maybe she just got sick of being leered at and patronized by Peacock perverts. Donny Deutsch nearly got bitchslapped (by Willie Geist, WTF?) for trying to link Burnett with Donald Trump. She's been told not to talk sports because OMG, she's a girl! And Chris Matthews skeezed everyone out by practically leaning into the camera to ogle her.

Is CNN any better? Larry King's gone. Howard Kurtz appears to lust only after himself. But then there's Eliot Spitzer to keep an eye on.